Mega Man 9 NES

[Chpexo]

Thanks Kuja Killer for the help, I can now keep my sanity. Modifying the maps with a hex editor was torture.

The patch has been updated.



What has been done:

* The title screen now looks like a title screen

* The boss select screen was improved

* The robot master selected screen

* Minor tweaks to the stages

Concerns at the moment:

* The title screen needs sprites. This should be too hard for me to add. The Japanese version has sprites in it, but the US version doesn't. In the Japanese version, the title screen sprites are located somewhere around 0x31C4A. I copied bytes from the Japanese version 0x30E50 - 0x3200D and pasted them into the US ROM. The game loaded the sprites from the Japanese version, but it crashed.

* On the robot boss master selected screen, the text has to be lowered a tile. The text is located at 0x61E0

* I believe I have used all the sprites available at the boss selected screen. The information for the sprites are located at 0x6241 - 0x630F. I would need more sprites to make the screen as accurate as possible.

[kuja killer]

you cant really copy from the japanese rom to english rom.
Everything is arranged different on JP, that's why you got a crash.

This is a copy-paste from "Megaman 3 Improvement" which will work.
-----------------------
310A8 - 20509E

31E60 - 203BC5A9808D00038D8005A91A8DC005A9A08DC003A9C08D60032056FD60
-----------------------
it'll show the megaman graphic from the japanese title. this is shared with the "get weapon screen" when you beat a level.
-----------------------
editing those sprite tiles is 34782-347F9
editing the x/y position of those tiles is 3226C-322E3
--------------
the line thing..
60F0 - default is 2B, to move down a row, add +40
ex, 6B to move down 1 row, AB for another row.

612F - this ends the text drawing thing. again add +40 for whatever rows you move down. 35 is default.
1 row down is 75, 2 rows down is B5.

[Zynk]

That's strange... the new patch seems to revert the game to the original/unmodified MM3 

[Chpexo]

The patch has been reuploaded and works now.

[wyndcrosser]

Again, great work all around.

Thank you

[Thanatos-Zero]

Just to inform you. Rockman 3 Burst Chaser has Megaman 9's Wily Stage 1 (Flash in the Dark)soundtrack.
If the sound engine of Rockman 3 and Megaman 3 is identical, it should not be a great problem to use the song, as you only will need to find the register, where it is kept.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbeer7ccf6M&fmt=18

Do not forget to give credit to Tsukikuro and Peercast, if you do.

[Mirby]

This project intrigues me. Can't wait to see more from it! Best of luck!

[OneCrudeDude]

One main reason being that the game actually uses more than 256 tiles in a level.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the MMC5 allow you to bump up the BG CHR data to 16,384 whopping tiles, as opposed to a measly 256?  Maybe an expansion would make this feasible, and I know just the Doctor.

[kuja killer]

im not sure what he's talking about exactly...
but i have a ROM by infidelity with the megaman 9 tilesets, and none of them appear to use more than 256 graphic tiles.

Unless he's talking about "more than 256 blocks" for building the levels (megafle)
The structure tabble window in megafle

if so, he should be able to free up un-used ones, or any duplicates.

[Greg2600]

This is fantastic!  Lone question I have is why choose MM3 to hack?  Wouldn't the later versions 4/5/6 have more game features that MM9/10 may have used?  Or that wasn't required?

[Chpexo]

Unless he's talking about "more than 256 blocks" for building the levels (megafle)
The structure tabble window in megafle

if so, he should be able to free up un-used ones, or any duplicates.

For the Concrete Man stage, it took me some time to locate all the duplicate and unused blocks. This stage is the only one complete for now. I know for sure that the Splash Women and Tornado Man stages are not possible with only 256 blocks. For the tornado Man stage, I had to cut blocks with clouds you can go behind. For Splash women, there's separate graphics for those orange ends of the tubes when they're on land. I had to cut them as well.

I would rather work with the 256 block limit, increasing the amount would be a pain to add and at the end would consume way too much space in the ROM.

[kuja killer]

uh oh, your right. i didnt realize.
They are all full. wow.

There was 1 thing you could do, i tested it out, but it's not much help.
on megafle, you'd open "SBD Editor" window.. click the button "convert to normal data"

And it re-arranges all the blocks on structure table automatically to remove un-used and duplicates.
I tested that on all the levels, and it doesn't give much back... here's the results when clicking that button once on all the levels, how many blocks it free's up.

hornet   - 0 | magma   - 3
galaxy   - 4 | tornado - 2
plug     - 9 | jewel   - 11
concrete - 2 | splash  - 0
----------------
yea that's a big problem, cant help you there because, 256 is the limit. MORE than just the level data would have had to be re-written to go past that, it's not worth it. I dont even do that on my game.

sorry.

[Spooniest]

uh oh, your right. i didnt realize.
They are all full. wow.

There was 1 thing you could do, i tested it out, but it's not much help.
on megafle, you'd open "SBD Editor" window.. click the button "convert to normal data"

And it re-arranges all the blocks on structure table automatically to remove un-used and duplicates.
I tested that on all the levels, and it doesn't give much back... here's the results when clicking that button once on all the levels, how many blocks it free's up.

hornet     - 0 |  magma  - 3
galaxy     - 4 |  tornado - 2
plug         - 9  |  jewel   - 11
concrete  - 2  | splash   - 0
----------------
yea that's a big problem, cant help you there because, 256 is the limit. MORE than just the level data would have had to be re-written to go past that, it's not worth it. I dont even do that on my game.

sorry.

You're probably familiar enough with my antics to know that I'm donkey spit when it comes to computers, but I wondered; why couldn't some form of data compression be applied?

You probably will read that question and conclude that I don't know what I'm talking about, and you'd be right on the money, but as I understand it, the word "compress" means to squeeze something into a very tight space, freeing up more space.

I'm just curious and trying to learn stuff.

[kuja killer]

yea maybe, but me though..i dont know how to do any sort of compression techniques when it comes to level data type stuff.

i dont even wanna try either.

[Googie]

Cool project, I'll be keepin' an eye out on this hack...

[OneCrudeDude]

If the hack is ever complete, maybe you could provide some documentation on what you couldn't fit in the game, so that someone else could do the MMC5 expansion proper.

Oh, what about using CHR-ROM and CHR-RAM?  Some games use this for various reasons, the Chinese love this as they store the symbol data in the RAM while the normal tiles aren't swapped out.

[azoreseuropa]

Wow. Neat! Keep up the good work. We can't wait to see what you do next!

[Chpexo]

(I'm like half asleep right now so if this is rambling just know I'm not drunk)
Patch update:

You can download the latest patch here!

What was done:

* Stages completed (Splash Women, Hornet Man)
* Title screen partially done
* Wily stage 1 layout done

Concerns:

* Two graphic banks are loaded into the PPU at the titlescreen. When I modify which ones are loaded, this also affects the stage select screen for only the top half of the PPU. I want to change which are loaded for the titlescreen so I can complete add mega man to the titlscreen.
* The doc robot stages can be completely removed
*The some of the wily stages share the same data

[Easy]

Good work!!!! 

[Thanatos-Zero]

Chpexo, I think this project would benefit of a collaboration of several talented hackers.

One of them, the newcomer MartsINY shows great promise.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5su2zO1pRM

I think it is worth to ask him for support.


Edit: I have talked with Kuja Killer about your project.

I have never realized until now, why there was a empty row on all the levels in this hack (at the bottom of the screen). The MM9 resolusition was 256x224. I seriously didn't know that all these years honestly, while the NES has 256x240 to my surprise.

This cannot be fixed, unless there is purposely an extra row of tiles added, to every screen in every level, like trying to "fake" a row, that it's not noticeable compared to the original mm9 layout.

Everything above or below that point, would have to be shifted down/up 16 pixels thus it will totally screw up the entire layout of the level design.
The max limit is 256, like I said before, thus Tornado Man cannot be finished. It is impossible, because it uses more about 300 unique tiles (animated snow and rain tiles). I am afraid but it's the truth.
It is pretty obvious, that Megaman 9 and 10 went beyond NES limits in some places.

It was then, I showed him Rock5Easly's (He returned by the way.) older NES recreation of Concrete Man.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2hLEu7Usks

Ah, I thought so. What rock5easily did, was exactly what I thought. He added an extra row to the very top of the screen
like when he was comparing the first hallway for concrete between this and chpexo's rom. There's one extra row of leaves for the tree's at the very top of the screen.. in rock5's rom.